Mallory Goetz

Artifact #2: Staff In-Service Leadership Project

Description of Project

This project was about leadership and specifically about helping lead my staff in technology integration.  In order to do this, I did research on technology integration strategies, leadership strategies, and then created a presentation on how to get started with technology integration for staff.  I approached my administration in order to get on the professional development schedule at the beginning of the year during staff in-service days.  Once given a time slot, I gave the 45minute presentation followed by a 45min workshop of teachers using the time to “flip” one lesson/project/unit from an old technology (poster, written report, oral presentation) to a new one (digital tool presentation, video, blog, voice clip, etc.).

View the presentation here on Popplet or below on this page!

Professional Reflection

This project was based on a need in my school to get teachers excited about technology integration, even those who were not interested or who were intimidated by the push towards technology that the school was giving them.  As the teacher-librarian, I am very excited about the fact that one of my roles is to help teachers and to be a leader in the area of technology.

Teachers already see me as someone who is willing to help them and as someone who is good with tech.  This presentation was designed to amplify those two perceptions in order to get teachers to trust, engage, and work with me.  This was a strategy that we learned in class, and I found after giving the presentation that it worked very well.  Teachers who were surly and unyielding in other professional development sessions were asking questions and getting help in this one.  They offered up examples and made appointments with me for follow-up.  It was actually  surprising to see how well presenting myself as “one of them” and gaining their trust worked.  I was not an administrator or a pretentious technology ‘expert,’ I was a teacher who had struggled through using technology just like them.  I will definitely be using this strategy again in my professional developments.

I was given a time of 45min for the presentation and 45 for the workshop. But I would modify this next time to being 30min for the presentation and an hour for the workshop because teachers wanted and needed more time to work and to consult with me one on one.  I also was given a mixed staff of elementary teachers through high school IB teachers.  If I were to do this over again I would change it to homogeneous (ES, MS, and HS) sessions to tailor the technology tools I shared to the level of the students taught.  I also could have broken the three groups into stations of sort…two stations being working on updating an old project into a more technological one and one being me presenting some useful tools and resources to get started.  However, this would have provided less time for teachers to talk to me one-on-one; a part of the session that teachers told me they valued.  Maybe doing this with another teacher would be beneficial—more hands to help.

One of the best moments of this project was a couple of days later when a high school IB Spanish Literature teacher came to me during the day and showed me his Popplet he made for a lecture.  He was excited that this was the first time in his 20 years of teaching that he would be using a technology like this, and that it was visual for his students and created a handout for them.  He was already asking about students making their own Popplets for class or how to create a group Popplet in order to analyze the literature he taught—this teacher went from 0 to 60 on his technology use and excitement in three days!  In the end that is what this kind of presentation is about—it’s not about me or who I am as a leader, it is about the teachers and the students and what creates the best learning environment for them.

Demonstrated Competencies

1: Reflective Practice

Part of being a teacher librarian is being a lifelong learner—I believe that by giving trainings like this one I am both contributing to others being lifelong learners, but that I am putting myself in a position to learn new things.  In order to prepare for this PD I had to look at some of the newest technology tools out there in order to share them with my staff.

2: Program Analysis and Planning

In order to create this presentation I had to look at the goals and objectives of the school—one of which was technology integration.  I could see a gap between our need for technology training and our goal of implementing technology regularly in the classroom.  I based this presentation on trying to fill that gap based on the needs of teachers.

3: Design and Development

I used current research about technology integration strategies (Heidi Hayes Jacobs’s book Curriculum 21), as well as, current research about leadership in order to create this presentation.

5: Implementation and Change

By training staff on a school-wide goal, I am participating in the implementation process and using change strategies in order for staff to get on board with the goal.

6: Management